Themes: Getting Started

The Semantic Web is a way of describing things in the world and
their relationships in a decentralized way. Resource Description
Framework (RDF) is the key technology which enables computers to
process some of the information humans take for granted when we
write on the web about (for example) people, places, time,
documents, and how these things relate to each other.

Specifications and working groups

Semantic Web specifications are available from the W3C's Semantic Web page.
SWAD-Europe has been very active in W3C specification development.
Dan Brickley co-chaired the RDF
Core working Group, which clarified
the RDF specifications between 2001 and 2004; while other members
worked on testcases and other documents within this group. Project
members have also been active in the W3C Data Access
Working Group, which has been deciding on a query language for RDF;
others participate in the W3C
Semantic Web Best Practices Working
Group, which is working to write down some of the formal and informal
knowledge about the creation and management of vocabularies,
modelling techniques, and certain vocabularies themselves (e.g.
Wordnet, thesauri).

Getting help

There are many informal groups working in this area. The main
one is the Semantic
Web interest Group, a good place to ask questions, whether via
the mailing list or the IRC channel. More information can be found
on the ESW wiki, a community driven
information source.
Planet RDF is an informal place to
keep track of webloggers in this
area. SWAD-Europe team members are active in all these communities, and
have sought to maintain an online presence in these areas in order
to help answer questions from users and developers of the
technologies. There are active communities in the specific areas of
image annotation, calendaring, thesauri, geographical information,
and information about people. There is also an active
Spanish-speaking developer community. SWAD-Europe has a
specific
page about its
role in community development.

Vocabularies and ontologies

Semantic Web vocabularies and ontologies are ways of describing
the world and can be very broad (e.g. Wordnet, a dictionary) or
very narrow (for example the Geo vocabulary, which only has three
properties and one class). Good places to look for information on
existing vocabularies are Schemaweb and Ontaria, and the Semantic
Web Best Practices working group is working on notes about
modelling ontologies and about maintaining vocabularies.
SWAD-Europe work in this area has included significant work
creating a thesaurus vocabulary and community, work towards a
calendaring RDF vocabulary, and work on image description.

Tools

Many tools for creating, parsing and storing Semantic Web data
are now available in multiple languages. A good starting point is
Dave
Beckett's RDF resource guide, tools section. SWAD-Europe has a
tools
page detailing work on tools support within the project,
including work test cases for RDF query languages which input into
the Data Access W3C Working Group and surveys of RDF APis and Tools
for scalable storage of RDF data. SWAD-Europe also supported work
on the Redland RDF application framework.

Developers were the main focus of SWAD-Europe's outreach work,
and details of the ten developer workshops held as part of the
project can be found on the community
building page. SWAD-Europe held workshops on Calendaring, image
annotation, Dublin Core, and FOAF and Social Software among other
topics.